It's not perfect and it most certainly isn't very professional but i've finally finished my final draft of my Marketing Campaign. I had to choose links between the poster, digipak and music video very carefully but I think I have succeeded in subtly bringing them all together. The 'black heart' figurine and black house is representative of the music video and the three superheroes are representative of my Digipak. I won't say that I am happy with the final thing because i'm not but I am happy that i've finished it in time.
If there are any last minute suggestions on things I could be able to improve on or add to it then please let me know below so that I can post an analysis of the final thing with my final digipak later this week and not have to go over it a few days before the deadline.
Our Marketing campaigns must have links with our music video and our Digipaks. The first link I could come up with was the use of the superheroes in the Digipak as shown above and I do have an idea for how to link it to my music video. I would have immediately followed this idea up if I hadn't been in the common room where youtube is not allowed. I shall explain later but till then here is a 1st draft of sorts of my marketing campaign.
I wasn't sure as to whether or not I should decorate/design the CD or not but I decided to add some minor things to the CD to make it more visually attractive. As you can tell (or you may not be able to tell) the 1st page was not planned at all. I had hoped I had taken more original photography photos for my digipak to last the entire thing however after having sorted through those I couldn't use or were of no use I found that I had about 7 pictures left over and that means that I couldn't complete some of the ideas I had in mind. Bearing this in mind I improvised with the photos I had and a little website called fontmeme.com. Font meme has been an absolute life saver. I have forever in it's debt. I am now on the final page of my digipak and should hopefully be completing it by the end of the day.
I do need suggestions though. Any suggestions in the comment section would be most appreciated. :)
Here are two sides of my Digipak design. The 1st image is my front cover and the 2nd image is the back page. Seeing them both together I have noticed that the change of background colouring may need to be sorted as it could potentially be marked as a theme continuity error. I also realise, now that i'm uploading these pictures, that this is the first that i've mentioned about my changing of the album's title. Originally the album was going to be called: 'Monsters' because of a lyric in our song choice 'Black Heart' by Stooshe however after working so closely with Sarah on Digipak ideas I decided to take a different route so that the examiner could differentiate between her work and mine. My album is now called: 'Villains' hence the (awful) heroes costumes. My target audience for my digipak would be females within the age ranges of 13 - 19. If we look at the grander scheme of things I could also suggest that although my digipak is aimed at these particular ages that is not to say that it will not appeal to older generations. The potential for my digipak to expand to women in their early 20s is possible as showing young girls as indepedent 'super heroes' will appeal to feminists and single women. This is not to say that women in relationships will not buy the product but women who are single will relate to independence and therefore seek to see other women (in this case band members) being proud to be independent.
To round this post off for you examiner here is a little game. The name of the game is 'Guess the reference'. If you are an avid musical watcher then perhaps you have already guessed the references. If you haven't then here is the fun part. Each of the track names is a reference to a specific musical. There are two fairly obvious ones and nine fairly unobvious ones. Write below if you've guessed them all. Good luck.
So as of yet I haven't really talked about my digipak and this is for one simple reason - that we hadn't even begun to think about them until a month ago - so apologies on my behalf. However Sarah and I could recall discussing our ideas for our digipaks at the beginning of the year. Low and behold we found a list of mind boggling ideas in the back of her notebook and thus started on our journey to digipakdom.
These ideas all consisted of monster themes and characters as the name of our album is indeed 'Monsters' or was as recently, after having discussed with my teacher and a focus group, I have renamed my digipak 'Villains' so that I can go along the route of using a comic-strip theme. Sarah is sticking with the original name.
Later I shall post an image or slideshow depicting what I wish to do for my digipak and how I hope it will end up looking. Until then I shall give you a list of things that I will be requiring for the photography I intend to use:
Superhero costumes: Superwoman, Wonder Woman and Bat Girl.
On Tuesday and Thursday of this week we have been, after months of saying that we'll get on with designing our Digipaks, learning how to use Photoshop. With help of Mr Nichola (our teacher who graciously took a photoshop course during his Christmas holidays.) we have now created mini masterpieces. Mine particularly masterful is the picture of a puppy running on pink diamonds. Then Sir took over and decided to make my puppies multi-coloured and shadowy and all sorts of effects that I have yet to grasp. However I am quite pleased with how well things have gone.
What you are currently seeing is a rough edit of some of the test shots we did over half term. Obviously we have quite a few kinks to work out of it but in the mean time we are quite pleased with what we have done. Yesterday (I shall dedicate a seperate post in regards to this so that I can fully explain what went on) we all got together to refilm for what we hope will be our final draft of the scenes between Ben and I and Ben and Sarah. Here are some of the issues we need to address:
Cinematography - Although for the most part we were happy with what we had achieved with the cinematography in our first draft Sarah and I both agreed that we wanted to expand on our variation of shots and angles. While watching it over i've realised that a majority of the shots we've used consist of close ups and two shots but in order for us to get top marks this year we need to push the boundaries and use a wider range so one of the first things we'll be aiming to change from our first draft to our second is to use more shot types.
The empty, black spaces in between shots - In our defence we had intended for them to be filled with performance shots that we were going to film in the hall however despite the fact that we had booked our school hall weeks in advance we were kicked out of there by a member of the P.E staff who will remain unnamed because his year 7 class was more important that our coursework. But be rest assured that there will be no black spaces in our final draft.
Our shaky camera work - I would say that it isn't that noticeable but it is clear to you and I that it is very noticeable. During the first scene with Livvy and Ben, Sarah had to film while walking backwards and therefore she was quite nervous about falling over and kept turning to check if she was okay. Unfortunately this meant that every time she turned the camera would jerk. Thankfully we have worked out a resolution to this problem whilst filming our second draft. We will continue using the tracking shot but so that Sarah feels more at ease I shall walk behind her, steadying her and the camera.
Length of the shots - Admittedly some of the shots do drag on and so we are planning on indispersing each scene with the same shot from various angles to keep the audience interested. This would also be helpful in regards to sticking with the conventions of pop music videos as they tend to use rapid cuts between different shots of the same scene (if the music video includes narrative) to go with the beat of the song.
The phone section - The phone scene doesn't quite work as not everyone is miming in time and we all start at different points in the song hence the reason we shall be refilming it for our second draft.
Any other comments of constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated in the comments below as i'm not sure I have addressed all of them.
There are many similarities between the music video for 'Say my name' by Destiny's child and 'Black heart' by Stooshe which we have been given permission to use for the purposes of our coursework. I should also add that the comparisons I will be making between the two will be based off of the music video we are creating as opposed to the actual video for the song. So essentially I shall be discussing these two bands and their music videos: Destiny's child and The Machine Ate Florence.
Let's start with the similarities between the two shall we?
1. Destiny's child is an all girl band. The Machine Ate Florence are also an all girl band. This means that both music videos should (if one of the most common stereotypes of girl band's is correct) have some symbolic representation of girl power or feminism. This could be shown through use of narrative, Claude Levi-Strauss's binary oppositions, Barthes mythologies or Sassure's theory of symbolism. Symbollically the fact that within the music video for 'Say my name' the three girls stick together in each room is to show how girl power is still dominant within the shots despite the fact that the man is clearly controlling all three of them. Similarily this will be shown in our music video with use of the performance shots including all three members of the band. These will come up within the music video at purposeful moments to foreshadow the fact that even though the male has been in control for the majority of the music video girl power will PREVAIL.
Here is an example to two all girl bands: Little Mix and Stooshe.
2. Destiny's child includes three band members. The Machine Ate Florence includes three band members. Generally there will be different roles allocated to each of the band members - an example being that there will always be one soul sister (the one who sings the long and/or high notes), one front woman and one who sings during obscure moments such as the bridge. During our music video we have allocated these parts to a certain member of the group based on where in the song they sing. Sarah has become our resident soul singer, Livvy is shown as the front woman of the band by taking the lead at the beginning of the song and I will be shown singing the obscure moments in between the chorus and the verses. There is a slight difference however with Destiny's child as there is clash between the soul singer and the front woman. This woman is Beyonce and she has taken the lead within the music video for 'Say my name' and sung all the high strung notes. In this particular music video (as it is quite an early music video) there are four members to the band of Destiny's child but shortly after this song was released the fourth member left. So I don't consider her a member of the band.
3. The song of choice in this particular music video by Destiny's child is about the band's suspicions that their boyfriend/s is cheating on them with someone else. This is demonstrated through the use of the lyric: "Could it be that you are at the crib with another lady?". This links in with the theme of our music video of three girls claiming that the man they are in love with is a monster: "Daddy i'm falling for a monster. Somehow he's scaring me to death". And also links in with the narrative that we are trying to display within our music video that the man is infact dating all three of them. This is shown through use of various shots of Ben (the actor we hired to play the monster who is actually lovely and FAB) spending time in romantic situations such as going on a walk, watching a scary film and his first meeting with one of the girls with each girl at seperate intervals within the song. The purpose of the song 'Say my name' is also reiterated throughout the music video as we see multiple shots of the man in question dancing (symbolically manipulating) with one of the band members while two of the other girls are within the shot with their gaze averted.
How does this music video demonstrate the conventions of pop music videos?
Here is a list of the expected conventions of most music videos within the Pop genre:
Colourful
Close up of artists to establish innocence
Fun and up beat
Appeals to a younger target audience though will include some mature aspects
Shows the artist/s/band involved in some form of dance routine
Leaves audience member in a good mood through use of location, mise-en-scene, cinematography etc
Scenarios tend to be based around love
Videos usually have a narrative
This particular music video conforms to practically all of these conventions which was one of the reasons why I chose to analyse it. I can only see one convention on the list that isn't displayed within the music video.
Colourful.
'Say my name' uses a variation of colours - red, white, orange and blue to differentiate between shots. As the music video progresses the bright colours begin to indisperse with each other to represent how the girl's are being forced together by the realisation that they're boyfriend is seeing all four/three of them.
Another use of the colour changing rooms is to give each member of the band an equal amount of time on camera. With every shot we see a new line up of the band. Each girl is spread evenly between shots with the exception of Beyonce who gets her own seperate shot every time she sings on the track as she dominates a vast majority of the song.
The use of colours could also be a symbolic representation of their emotions on the situation. White could be the shock because of their naivety and innocence. Blue could be the sadness they feel. Red could be the anger at how foolish they may feel and orange could be the paranoia or the feeling of impending doom on their relationships. I don't know. I could be wrong.
Close ups of the artist to establish innocence.
Here are three screencaps of some of the close ups featured in this music video. Out of the three of them Beyonce has the most because of her overall dominance within the song. The use of these close ups is to establish the artist as the wronged party. This is done by placing the close ups at the appropriate moments within the song. This would usually be to show the importance of the lyric to the person singing it however I could not find an example of this in this music video.
The most common lyric used in the close ups of this music video is: "Say my name" which could suggest the desperation the band feel for their loved one to essentially look them in the eye and say they love them.
In this screencap Kelly Rowland's hair matches the background behind her. This could be to represent that she feels blue about having been cheated on or at the prospect of losing this person she loves so much.
Shows some form of dance routine.
It goes without saying that their is definately a performance/dance element to this music video. The bridge which is mainly music orientated is opened onto a dance performed by the band members and other dancers behind them. The dance doesn't particularly consist of much other than bending and spinning but the fact that it is in sync leads to me to believe that it has been choreographed. The purpose of this dance routine is to keep the audience interested during the moments where there are no lyrics to preoccupy them. This may also be in order to appeal to a larger audience through use of the male gaze. By wearing skimpy tops and tight, leather trousers they are attracting audience members who wouldn't usually have listened to this genre of music because of the voyeuristic treament of women in this particular scene.
Although there are aspects of each convention in this music video it is hard to explain them through my analysis. I shall post some more tommorow in regards to the rest.
This is our sales pitch for The Machine Ate Florence that we did on Tuesday. The Machine Ate Florence is the band name we will be using for the purposes of our coursework. The song we will be using is Black Heart by Stooshe.
Here is a video (which we will probably edit later so that we can stop our incessant cackling) of us explaining our storyboard for our minute extract of Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. Please ignore the mini conversations between me and Sarah whilst displaying our fabulous drawing skills.
So I noticed that I haven't posted anything new in a while so I decided i'd log on and let you (the examiner or Mr Nicola or whoever is reading) that i'm not dead. After having finished our second one minute extract we decided we would get going with the Sales Pitch for our final music video. This will include the following:
A band logo that we have created for our band name: The Machine Ate Florence. We've named the band The Machine Ate Florence for several reasons. One being that we were aiming to use something satirical because we have discovered (after months of audience research) that our demographic prefer bands with the use of funny/satirical names. However I would like to add for the sake of clearing my conscience that by using this name we are in no way insinuating anything about Florence and The Machine (though it may look that way). I myself am actually a big fan of Florence and The Machine so the use of this name is strictly for the purposes of the music video and not for self expression.
A storyboard/shot by shot of what we intend to do for the opening minute of our music video. I shall post (later on today) a mock up of our storyboard so that you can see what we're trying to achieve within our opening minute so that if we keep it we can justify our choice of location, setting, mise-en-scene, lighting etc or if we decide to take a different route we can show the process and if neccessary justify our reasons for not keeping our original.
An analysis of how our fake band will/does conform to the stereotypes of most girl bands. A.K.A Girl power and so on.
An analysis of how our fake band will/does subvert the stereotypes of most girl bands.
How and why we made our song choice. For our music video we shall be using the song: "Black Heart" by Stooshe. I will explain in another post why we chose to use this song and the legal information required. Rest assured though that we do have permission from the band to use the song and I will give evidence of this in the aforementioned post.
We may even go into detail on what we want the message of our music video to be and how we will represent that throughout the video.
So far we have completed -
Mocking up our band logo
Our storyboard 10 seconds into the song
And have started working on -
The storyboard/shot by shot of the opening minute of our music video.
The analysis on how our band conforms/subverts the stereotypes of typical girl bands
Today we should be working on finishing the storyboard for our opening minute. This will commence when Sarah finishes her driving lesson. If I do not have a mock up of our storyboard by tonight then take that as to meaning we haven't finished and I will try to get it onto my blog at Thursday the latest since we will probably be working on it in our free periods on Thursday.
This is our one minute extract of Wuthering Heights. We did try to make it as accurate as possible however that clearly isn't the case. Perhaps we should have chosen an easier music video to remake but here it is anyway.
I will be addressing the issue on there being houses in the background in another post where I will be analysing our prelim. So do not worry. There will be an explanation though I think we do explain in our video diary.
Hopefully we will be uploading another version of this so that there won't be nothing but eternal blackness and Kate Bush singing in the end. Enjoy.
I chose the song "Last night" by Lucy Spraggan which isn't actually a recorded song (as you can tell) but a song that was performed on X Factor. Side note - I was watching X factor because my sister wanted me to watch something with her. I was away for a month without seeing her. So I had no choice in what it was we watched. So that's why you can hear people clapping in the background and things. I will be uploading this onto youtube as soon as I get back from visiting Sarah and Livvy but for now it's on my blog. I hope you enjoy it.
